A liquid crystal display (LCD) includes an LCD panel formed with liquid crystal cells and pixel elements with each associating with a corresponding liquid crystal cell. These pixel elements are substantially arranged in the form of a matrix having gate lines in rows and data lines in columns. The LCD panel is driven by a driving circuit including a gate driver and a data driver. The gate driver generates a plurality of gate signals (scanning signals) sequentially applied to the gate lines for sequentially turning on the pixel elements row-by-row. The data driver generates a plurality of source signals (data signals), i.e., sequentially sampling image signals, simultaneously applied to the data lines in conjunction with the gate signals applied to the gate lines for aligning states of the liquid crystal cells on the LCD panel to control light transmittance therethrough, thereby displaying an image on the LCD.
In such a driving circuit, a shift register is utilized in the gate driver to generate the plurality of gate signals for sequentially driving the gate lines. To lower down costs, there have been efforts to integrate the shift register and the gate driver into an LCD panel. One of the efforts, for example, is to fabricate the shift register and the gate driver on a glass substrate of the LCD panel, namely, the gate on array (GOA) arrangement, using amorphous silicon (a-Si) thin film transistors (TFTs).
In order to effectively drive the gate lines of the LCD panel, the a-Si TFTs are usually designed with large (channel width) sizes since the mobility of carriers in the a-Si material is very low. However, the larger the a-Si TFTs are, the higher the parasitic capacitance in the a-Si TFTs is, which causes the power consumption in the data lines of the LCD panel to increase substantially.
Therefore, a heretofore unaddressed need exists in the art to address the aforementioned deficiencies and inadequacies.